One Lake, Two Likes
by uebermensch
Summary: A video of Henry's errant jump into Lake Steadman surfaces online, which Eliza immediately catches. She thinks about whether or not she should push the video deeper into the realms of social media. What happens when Henry finds out that a video exists and it's gone viral. COMPLETE (2 chapters).
1. I Like You

Summary: A video of Henry's errant jump into Lake Steadman surfaces online, which Eliza immediately catches. She thinks about whether or not she should push the video deeper into the realms of social media. What happens when Henry finds out that a video exists and it's gone viral. Big nods to 1x05 (Even Hell Has Two Bars) and 1x13 (Wishing Well); based also on this tweet and subsequent replies. Eliza is on Team Freddy and Henry is on Team Salad. I miss seeing Heliza, and I'm borrowing Emily Kapnek's characters for awhile.

* * *

Chapter 1 of 2 : I LIKE YOU

 _HH: "It's over ..."_

 _ED: "Ehhhhh, it's not a big deal. I mean, I can't check, but I bet it's not even trending. So, you know, the only people who know about you jumping into a forbidden lake are your boss, his family, ... the Montecito branch of the EPA, and maybe, Lake Steadman ..."_

Henry celebrated the removal of his arm cast by meeting up with the "skate guys". Eliza had expressed reservations big time, but he wasn't so stupid to try again, would he. Seemed consistently boring, perhaps. But it was also realistic, most definitely.

What was also keeping things real was their Saturday morning phone conversation.

"Hey …"

"Hey, H-Dawg, how are you?"

He heard rustling noises on the other end of the line. "I'm good, thank you. I apologize for being abrupt, but I wanted to ask …"

"Hold on a sec. Hey, those are my boots! Lady, get off me! Sorry, Henry …"

He looked down at his mobile phone. "Where are you, Eliza?"

She sounded a little winded. "I'm on the hunt at the Glendale Galleria. Got a DM on the tweets about a hella good sale on shoes. And yeah, I really did tell a suburban mom to go suck on some cheap-ass clogs …"

He laughed. "Nice. Hey, I wanted to ask a favor."

He heard nothing and thought the connection got cut. "Hello? Eliza, you still there?"

"Uh, yeah. You do realize you're going to owe me. Like, huge."

He sighed for effect. "Yes, I know. I was hoping you were going to let it go, but clearly, you are not."

"Hell, no."

"Okay, I'm having second thoughts; maybe I should reconsider …"

"Wait, wait! I'm being serious now. Ask away."

"Now that my arm cast is off, I have to go back to the skatepark."

"Henry, you promised!" After his epic fail at the skate park to end up in the hospital with a broken arm, he promised her he would never skateboard or pretend to skateboard again, ersatz lessons for Kevin Whitaker notwithstanding.

"Yes, I know I promised. And no, I'm not going out to skate. My car's in the shop for the weekend. I'm gonna take a taxi and head out one last time for a chat with the skaters. Could you please pick me up at the skatepark, say, at about 1?"

After reluctantly agreeing to her terms including trips together to Soul Cycle and (good god) a day in a mud bath at the spa of her choosing, he heard her very enthusiastic squeal before saying goodbye.

At about a quarter after one, she arrived at the skateboard park to find him in conversation with the boys. They all cast glances in her direction, and she wondered what in the world they were talking about. He said his goodbyes, and headed in her direction with a content look on his face.

She threw him a look. "What was **thaaat** about?"

Henry was taken aback by her question. "Excuse me?"

"You were all like, hush hush, and you kept throwing these looks in my direction. Which was weird. Were you talking smack about me?"

"What? No, of course not!"

"Okay, seriously, were you talking about me at all? Seems like you were …"

He stepped into the passenger side, and shut the door behind him. "No, it was nothing."

Eliza peered at Henry, above her sunglasses. He didn't exactly answer her question. _Interesting_ , she thought.

"What? It was nothing."

He was a terrible liar, but unlike their phone conversation that morning, she let it go. She shrugged, and moved onto the topic of her latest find of these super cute boots she found at the Galeria. While she raved about a total shutdown of her competitive bidders, she kept her eyes on the road.

His eyes, however, were on her.

A few days later, Eliza was at home surfing the web to check the latest videos gone viral. Scrolling down the titles, she kept both mental and browser bookmarks on ones she wanted to watch. One immediately caught her eye and she clicked on the title.

It was exactly what she had long suspected.

Because there was no way a nature preserve in a park accessible to people wouldn't be monitored for man-made shenanigans. Like typically from drunk-ass dudes. In this case, one dude who was unfortunately sober. Specifically, a dude who wanted promotion above all else. More specifically, one very naked Henry Higgs.

 _Ok, the face and head region are coarsely pixellated, but I know that's him. Complete with his "cannonball" yell. And yelllooooo, `cuz hot dayyyyyuuuumn, the man has a fine ass. And yeah, I've seen him naked, sure, but it's not the same thing. Like the time I went totes full-frontal when I showed him the girls and curls. I wonder if he knows about this video. Knowing his boring habits, probably not._

 _Still, I did get him onto Twitter. But only barely, because we did agree on his username: the_henry_higgs. And even though he nuked his Facebook account, I also got him to join Instagram, and the first shot he put up was his trademark look: stunned silence. Not that he cared all that much, which duh, I know. I still wanted him to try, which he did, if hesitantly, for me. I can't tell if he's really clueless or stubborn, because he's only put up one other `gram. Even if I love that photo, even if I don't know how he managed to take a picture of me leading a sales report in one of our staff meetings. He made me look good. And he made me look smart and competent. All in the same shot. It's like, he really sees me, and sees the best in me. And I know he likes me because we're friends. But somehow I'm thinking there's something more, that maybe, he like likes me. Or something …_

But this was a dangerous road to go down, and it wouldn't be very productive, either for her state of the feels or for being unable to do anything substantive about their obvious connection. What she **could** work on was whether she should tweet the video with a mention and `gram it up with a video-frame. Just so she could give him a like-spike and a follower-bump.

 _Meh, then again, I'd probably get the bulk of the numbers._

Or not. Watching the video again, she was convinced no one, not even the people at work except for Terence and Saperstein would know it was Henry. And if they somehow saw this video, she didn't think they would spill the beans. But one thing was certain: she couldn't help but embrace the one feature which she couldn't erase from her mind. And just like her own second best physical feature, Henry had a deliciously cute underbutt.

 _I bet I could trend the shit outta that video. Yeah, I'm gonna retweet this, but leave Henry's name out of it._

Her finger hovered over the "retweet" button.

A reluctant twitch of the nose, a twist of her lips in minor annoyance. Because that inner monologue was speaking to her in Henry's voice. The inner voice was practically shaking its fist at her.

But she shook her head, and gave in to her initial impulse.

She added a comment under the video which read: "a guy who decided to be less boring by jumping unknowingly into a forbidden lake." Some comments sided on the 'ewww', but many complimented the man on his body shape and even gave additional style points for his entry into the lake. She got the hits and clicks, but some were asking who this guy was. She told them to check out user 'the_henry_higgs' on the tweets and grams, even if he did next to nothing on social media.

(Already completed Chapter 2 to be posted here shortly)


	2. You Like Me

Chapter 2 of 2 : You Like Me

Two weeks passed, and she waited for the shitstorm that never came. She did a mental shrug, and convinced herself Henry was never going to find the video.

That was her first of two mistakes.

In his office, Henry was in deep thought about the latest marketing and merchandising virtues about their line of cough syrup products, when an audio signal told him new e-mail had arrived.

He swiveled towards the computer monitor. _That's weird; the e-mail is a notification from YouTube. No viruses found; that's good. Okay then, let's see where this link goes ..._

( Hottie jumps into forbidden lake )

And he got to watch his naked glorious self make the leap into Lake Steadman. The head part was all pixels, but he recognized the crowd on the shore; the running start, the leap, aaaaaand the plunge that killed an ecosystem.

 _What?! How did this happen? Who recorded this? And how the hell did this get online?_

At least he had the distinction of having single-handedly destroying the Santa Barbara Nature Initiative Freshwater Preserve.

He picked up the phone and pushed the button set to Eliza's extension. "Eliza, would you please come to my office?" He surprised himself with the calm delivery.

"Wow, don't I usually barge into your office without an invite?"

"Yes, you do, but this time, I need to speak with you."

"Everything okay?"

"Maybe. Depends."

"Depends on what?"

"Yeah, Eliza, I really need to talk to you."

She poked her head through his office door. "Hey."

"Eliza, please come in and close the door behind you. I've got something to show you."

She squealed, thinking it was something cool he'd found for her. The excitement quickly died in her throat when he played the video for her, and she made that low exhalation noise that always indicated she knew she was busted. Her next choice of words were unfortunate. "I can explain ..."

"Explain?! How did this happen? Did you do this?!"

"Okay, first of all, I had nothing to do with making the video. You and I found out about Lake Steadman at the same time, remember? Second, the lake is also connected to publicly accessible park and forest; so, are you really surprised? Three, it's way cool you think I had the juice to pull this off. But that leads to four, and that's me a little pissed you could think I had something to do with this."

"You're right, you're right; I'm sorry. But still. Seriously, how did this happen?"

"A nature preserve doesn't just happen overnight. You know there's going to be some kind of interest, especially here in California. Also, security- and web-cams are small and dirt cheap. I'm not surprised there's footage, but I am surprised someone decided to post the footage. Besides, you don't look **that** bad: you are in good shape after all …" She waggled her eyebrows for effect.

"You're not helping …"

"Besides, the pixel resolution is totally shit. No one can see that it's you. No one will know that it's you."

"Except you."

"Except me. And Saperstein's family …"

"What are we going to do about it?"

"There's nothing to do. Judging by the numbers so far, your video's been seen over 100 thousand times. Textbook viral."

"How did that happen? Wait …" He narrowed his eyes at her, and recognizing that look, she adopted the wide-eyed look of innocence.

"You retweeted the video the moment you saw it, didn't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Please, I **know** you. Even if it's not what I wanted, I know your heart was in the right place."

She tilted her head at him. "I didn't retweet the video the moment I saw it. I retweeted the video a full five minutes after I saw it."

He chuckled. "Okay, now that I've found out, can't we get the video deleted or ask someone to delete it?"

"Henry. You really don't understand the Internet, do you? It's not like some on-off switch. We can't do a thing about it, although …"

"Although?" he asked hopefully.

"Although I was considering whether to push the video some more, and get you more likes and followers."

"Please, no. I'm already embarrassed and horribly scarred."

"Come on, Henry, don't be such a drama queen. Seriously. It'll be okay. It's hard to see your face in the video. And as you're not tatted up, you don't have any other distinguishing marks or scars. Look, I know you're not too big on social media, but I have been trying to get you to learn about what moves people under your age-bracket. You know, the age of boring death."

"Ha ha. Thank you, by the way."

"You're welcome."

"Eliza, I'm not worried about getting more likes."

"You're not?"

"No, I never have. You know that."

This was the second of her two mistakes. "Yeah, I do."

"This leads me back to your question you asked me a few weeks ago. When you picked me up at the skateboard park, and you caught me in serious conversation with the skateboarders."

"AHA! So I **was** right! You **were** talking about me. Are you finally gonna tell me what that was about?"

"Yes, I am. I lied; I'm sorry. It was about you. We talked about you."

"Me?"

"As you know, one of the guys signed my arm cast with the phrase 'No Fear'. It's a very good philosophy, but in this case, I directed that mantra to the way I feel about you. And when you came by, I told them I was going to tell you."

"What?"

"Sooooo, there's only one 'like' I'm interested in getting."

"Only one?" Somehow the ability to construct full sentences had left her. It was possible it had something to do with the hidden unspoken realization of her dreams. That one Henry Higgs himself was opening up his feelings. About her, and almost as unbelievable as the first, expressed directly to her.

"I only want one like, Eliza. I only need one. From you."

She gasped in astonishment, but recovered quickly in practiced fashion. "That's goooooood, Henry," she replied singsong. "Because, trust?"

"I do." He let that phrase hang meaningfully for a second. "We've been through a lot together."

"Yes, we have. One thing though, Henry." She stepped well inside his personal space.

"Yeah?" He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat.

"I'm still with Freddy." She gazed at him carefully to gauge his response.

"Oh." His face fell, and she could almost feel the echoes of his disappointment ring out in the room and reflecting off the walls.

She reached out with her finger and lifted his chin, her eyes demanding his attention. "I like you, too."

He blushed furiously, blowing out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. There was relief, too. There was a lot of hope in her admission, as well as what was left unspoken in those four small yet important words.

Seeing the effect she had on him, she laughed, the joy reaching her eyes.

She was about to turn and leave, when he reached out and grabbed her hand.

"Uh, Eliza …?"

She looked down at his hand on hers, mirth still in her eyes. "Yeah?"

"I wanted to ask if you wanted to come by tonight and hang out. Last night, I DVR'ed a nature documentary, a new one by David Attenborough, and it's about the Great Barrier Reef."

"Coolio. Yeah, sure. Buuuut, I should check first with Freddie to see if he wants to go out tonight and what the rest of my schedule's like this week."

"Yes, of course. Please let me know."

"See you later, Henry."

"Bye." He watched her open the door and leave. _It's a start,_ he thought.


End file.
